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TIL: Andreessen, Thiel, Cuban, IBM, Intel Are Against Net Neutrality

19 points by please_choose ↗ HN
I haven't see any friends, Democrats, or Republicans (including comments on Fox News Facebook posts that I've seen) that weren't pro Net Neutrality. Curious, I searched to see who was against it beyond AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Arguments_against): Individuals who oppose net neutrality include TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn,[172][173], Marc Andreessen,[174] Scott McNealy,[175] Peter Thiel,[168] David Farber,[176] Nicholas Negroponte,[177] Rajeev Suri,[178] Jeff Pulver,[179] John Perry Barlow,[180] Mark Cuban[181] and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

Corporate opponents of this measure include Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Nokia, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Juniper, D-Link, Wintel, Alcatel-Lucent, Corning, Panasonic, Ericsson, and others.[85][166][167]

11 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 49.2 ms ] thread
27182818284
I think this could be an interesting post, but I'd rather see it in the form of a longer blog-or-Medium-like post.

If you feel like it, you should write something up about it like that and share it out.

please_choose
Why would it be better as a medium post?
27182818284
Blog or Medium post. Medium has an advantage that it is a bit more capable in virality out of the gate as Medium will recommend posts to users based on their interests. A posting on an obscure blog I won't see, but a Medium post might get recommended to me the next time I'm bored and pop open the app.
legitster
Are the examples listed actually against Net Neutrality as a concept, or the revised legislation regarding it's implementation? I don't think it's fair to lump both together.

Reason.com seems to be the only place that collects argument defending the overturn: http://reason.com/blog/2017/12/05/no-the-fcc-isnt-overturnin...

phaus
Cuban's an entertaining guy, but he deludes himself into thinking he's well-educated on all technology-related issues because he was a business guy lucky enough to latch on to a start-up that exploded in the early days of the web.

He's mostly a libertarian, so he's a die-hard proponent of free markets. He honestly thinks the pre-net neutrality telecom/ISP market was a free market. It was and still is a captive market where a few bad actors control everything.

prepend
I think the issue may be the idea of net neutrality and regulation trying to promote and enforce net neutrality.

The rules being overturned now are fairly new and weren’t very good when implemented. The answer should be to reform, not remove entirely.

But just saying all of these people are against net neutrality is not accurate and can especially be misconstrued currently as the world divides into simplified pro/anti groups.

miguelrochefort
So are most economists.

Net Neutrality allows the government to control the internet. Many of us believe that the internet should remain free and unregulated.

We all agree that ISP monopolies are a problem, and that's what should be tackled. It's much better to give monopolies competition that to force them to be fair.

Here's more people opposing Net Neutrality: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoNetNeutrality/

AnimalMuppet
> Net Neutrality allows the government to control the internet.

Well... Net Neutrality allows the government to prohibit certain actions on the internet. That's a form of control, true, but it's a long way from "control the internet". (See the Great Firewall of China, or worse, North Korea for what "controlling the internet" can really mean.)

Governments - even free governments - always prohibit a subset of actions. We have freedom of speech, for example, but not freedom to falsely advertise.

> We all agree that ISP monopolies are a problem, and that's what should be tackled. It's much better to give monopolies competition that to force them to be fair.

Here I will agree with you.

xt00
Economists are for anything that says the free market solves the problem and governments are not the solution.. in this case, the main people who want to get rid of net neutrality are big corporations who want to charge people for the right to allow you to access something versus the consumer choosing what they want to access and the ISP's need to just be a dumb pipe.
xt00
Amazing, an account created 5 days ago posts something about net neutrality.. shocker.. who's behind this account called "please_choose" ?? ???!?